City Tatts in $200m deal with ICD and Sinclair Brook to create mixed-use tower

City Tattersalls Club, one of the largest and oldest clubs in Sydney, has revived plans for a $200 million mixed-use tower at its 194 Pitt Street site in conjunction with developers ICD and Sinclair Brook.

It is the second launch of the proposal, after talks ended last year with Mirvac and the club.

Under the scheme, the club will be retained from the ground to ninth floor, in addition to a 100-room hotel and about 250 apartments.

However, under the original plan there were 100 car bays, but that might be reduced to about 50 in keeping with the City of Sydney’s car-reduction policy in the central business district.

The site will have an angular feature to ensure it does not overshadow Hyde Park. The club confirmed it had held preliminary talks with the owners of David Jones, for any development of the air space above the Market Street store, but they did not progress.

The new partner, ICD, is backed by the Chinese giant Sino Ocean Ltd, which is one of the biggest property companies in China. ICD is an Australian company and, with Sino Ocean, is currently developing the Eq Tower in Melbourne, comprising 633 apartments.

Sinclair Brook has around 3000 apartments under construction and 2000 in planning and sales. These projects include mixed use (hotel and apartments) and residential apartment projects.

Architects, Elenberg Fraser have been appointed along with Colliers International.

City Tatts’s chairman, Patrick Campion, said the joint venture with ICD and Sinclair Brook, was considered in the best interests of the club’s members. On Tuesday evening about 100 members turned up for a briefing and seemed “positive”.

Mr Campion said the club retained a good relationship with its bankers and that the joint venture partners were providing financing.

“The plan, once all approvals have been received, is to start in early 2017 and be completed by 2020,” Mr Campion said.

Michael Mai, managing director of ICD Property, said City Tattersalls Club’s prime CBD location provided ICD Property and Sinclair Brook with an opportunity to deliver quality residential apartments as part of a large mixed-use development in an under-supplied market.

He said the project would be a good “springboard” into the Sydney property market and the group had plans for further expansion across the country.

“We currently have five projects worth over $600 million under development and plan to expand our projects portfolio to over $2 billion by 2017. We are experienced in joint venture arrangements,” Mr Mai said.

Tony Guilfoyle, chief executive of City Tattersalls Club, said the club was pleased with the outcome of the expressions of interest campaign, and “we look forward to working closely with the ICD Property, Sinclair Brook and Elenberg Fraser team and benefiting from their experience of developing slimline towers”.

“The Club has made significant progress with our Stage 1 Development Application (DA) that has already been submitted to the City of Sydney Council,” Mr Guilfoyle said.

“This will now be withdrawn and we will submit a new DA, based on council’s comments on the original DA and on ICD Property’s and Sinclair Brook’s plans.”